«When the morphological verbal repetition are used to duplicate a pleasant atmosphere, it may convey for the Chinese readers the same pragmatic value as the diminutive does in the original context»

Zhishuo Ding
«Pragmatic reproduction of cultural-linguistic referents in translation from Spanish to Chinese»
Círculo de Lingüística Aplicada a la Comunicación, vol. 81 (2020)
Número monográfico: «TAME, gramaticalización e interfaz sintaxis-pragmática del español y el mapudungún»

Círculo de Lingüística Aplicada a la Comunicación (CLAC) | Universidad Complutense de Madrid | ESPAÑA

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«Abstract

»This paper examines the pragmatic translation of cultural-linguistic items through a relevance-theoretic study. The results suggest: 1) implicative value of the cultural-linguistic items is context-dependent and 2) loss of the linguistic form might imply the loss of the implicit clue.

»The study aims to expose the pragmatic values conveyed by the cultural-linguistic elements of Spanish and its Chinese translation. Furthermore, it explores how much original Spanish linguistic elements are accessible to the target readers of the Chinese translation. Based on a Spanish novel, namely La Colmena, and its Chinese translation Feng Fang, linguistic cultural referents from the Spanish original and their translations were compared, considering their cognitive contexts.

»This research points to the fact that the cognitive-environmental values of cultural-linguistic elements are generally underestimated, especially in Spanish-to-Chinese translation and, a large number of Spanish linguistic items do not maintain their implicatures in the Chinese translation due to different contextual assumptions.

»Introduction

»As the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states, language and culture affect each other; meanwhile, culture is reflected through language. Undoubtedly, each culture has its own linguistic regularities, which might not have equivalence in other cultures. In the study of Nida (1945, 203-208) regarding cultural segments, linguistic culture was proposed as one of the basic categories in cultural translation that would hinder successful communication between works and readers.

»There are a number of studies which concentrate on linguistic culture or focus on semantic or pragmatic features (Wu 2013; Mangiron 2008; Molina 2006; Nida 1945), but still, the implicative quality of cultural-linguistic elements has not yet been thoroughly documented.

»Gutt (2014), who introduced relevance theory into translation studies, points to the fact that one of the features contributing to the interpretation of the implicature is the cognitive context, which has two primordial factors: contextual effect and its processing effort.

»Despite an increasing number of translation studies focusing on relevance theory, the scholarly references on the relevance-theoretic view of cultural-linguistic study are scarce, particularly relating to translations between Spanish and Chinese.

»To fill the gap in systematic cultural-linguistic research from a relevance-theoretic viewpoint, a Spanish postwar novel, La Colmena, and its Chinese translation Feng Fang, have been selected in order to explore the pragmatic reproduction of cultural-linguistic elements in literary translation from Spanish to Chinese.

»Firstly, the pragmatic features of cultural-linguistic manifestations will be described, comparing both cognitive contexts of Spanish and Chinese readers. This will be followed by an analysis of how source and target readers are capable to grasp the pragmatic meaning of each cultural-linguistic instance considering both contextual effects and processing effort.

»This study differs from other research in the following ways:

»1) it describes the cultural-linguistic features from a relevance-theoretic perspective, which gives prominence to the essential role played by the cognitive context in linguistic manifestations;

»2) it aims to work with the pragmatic qualities of given Spanish and Chinese cultural-linguistic utterances, which will shed new light on intercultural research between Spanish and Chinese;

»and 3) it highlights the need for the systematic study of the linguistic culture between Spanish and Chinese from a cognitive-contextual perspective.

»Discussion

»On one hand, as it is shown in the first example, when the proper names are related with the Catholic religion, which is not one of the contextual assumptions of Chinese readers, the religious values carried in each linguistic item are lost in the translation.

»These pragmatic properties are implicatures created by the author for the characterization of Mrs. Visitación. But the target readers lose this due to their different cognitive environments. As for the second example, the same cultural-linguistic item, rojo (‘red’), is related with different contextual assumptions in each culture due to the different social development of Spain and China.

»Even though the reproduction, a new created term, 红鬼 (‘red monster’), could also be understood as a pejorative term, it does not exist in the previous contextual assumption of Chinese readers. Hence, the translated term will require more processing effort, and the contextual effect reduces as well. These results demonstrate that the accessibility of the implicatures of the cultural-linguistic elements depends on the contextual assumptions of the target readers.

»If the Chinese readers do not have the corresponding contextual assumptions, like Catholicism or other social phenomena of Spain, it would demand more processing effort to decode the pragmatic values hidden in the cultural-linguistic manifestations.

»On the other hand, when the Chinese linguistic form erhuayin or the morphological verbal repetition are used to duplicate the pleasant atmosphere, they may convey the same pragmatic value as the diminutive does in the original context. But, when the linguistic form is not maintained in the translation, as shown in the example (3), the implicature hidden in these cultural-linguistic items along with the negative attitude of Mrs. Visitación about the non-Catholics, would be missing, thereby reducing the context effect.

»As for idiomatic expressions in examples (4) and (5), when the translator tries to reproduce the original idiomatic expressions or sayings with Chinese Chengyu or other Chinese idiomatic forms, the contextual effect of the Chinese readers is enhanced. And the contrary is proved when the idiomatic form is not maintained in the target text, like the first instance 蠢女人 (‘stupid woman’) of the example (4). This may due to the fact that the contextual assumptions of the intensifying function of the Chinese idiomatic formations help reduce the processing effort.

»Above all, this may suggest that the original linguistic formation might convey the implicative stimulus. When the linguistic form is not maintained in the target text, the communicative clue for the implicature might also disappear. It would be complicated for the target readers to associate the translated items with the original pragmatic quality, and thus, diminish the contextual effect.

»Conclusion

»This article has pragmatically explored the reproduction of cultural-linguistic items with an original Spanish novel and its Chinese rendition. The relevance theory is incorporated as the orientation of this study, which mainly concerns the cognitive context in translation studies. In this sense, it compares the Spanish and Chinese contextual environments and explores the processing efforts that the cultural-linguistic instances take to generate the contextual effect in each context.

»By such means, this article proves the implicative values conveyed by the cultural-linguistic issues, in particular, within the Spanish and Chinese cognitive contexts and verifies the convenience of the relevance theory in exploring such values in linguistic culture. The study clearly shows that the interpretation of the implicature conveyed by the cultural-linguistic instances requires similar cognitive context. The results might also indicate a regularity that the linguistic formation might be the stimulus that carries implicatures.

»When the linguistic forms are lost in the translation, the meaning it conveys may also disappear. The undertaking here demonstrates how the cases presented of many Spanish cultural-linguistic instances require more processing effort in the target context than it does in the original one due to the cognitive-contextual differences between Spanish and Chinese cultures.

»Moreover, as indicated previously in the section 2.3, most of the existing pragmatic-oriented systematic approaches and classifications for linguistic culture are limited to external contextual features. Even though Wu’s study (2013) concentrated on the cognitive contexts of China and Spain, this research is mainly within an audiovisual frame, while many of literary cultural-linguistic elements could not find a suitable category, like idiomatic expressions and so on. All these descriptions clearly illustrate the demand for a new cultural-linguistic classification and systematic study of Spanish and Chinese translation within a cognitive standpoint.

»Finally, further research into a larger corpus is suggested to shed more light on the new cultural-linguistic taxonomy as well as to explore the cognitive relationship and contextual differences between Spanish and Chinese linguistic items. Moreover, supplementary research is recommended to interview the translators with the purpose of exploring their attitudes about the cultural-linguistic translation. In short, this article could enhance the cognitive-contextual consideration given to the cultural-linguistic study, especially by exploring the contextual effects in Spanish and Chinese circumstances.»